Wage Peace
by Judyth Hill Judyth's poem follows the form of the Tibetan Buddhist meditation, Tonglen . Try it with your own breath, "Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees." Or make it your own. W age peace with your breath. Breathe in firemen and rubble, breathe out whole buildings and flocks of blackbirds. Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields. Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees. Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact. Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud. Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers. Make soup. Learn to knit and make a hat. Think of chaos as dancing raspberries, imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish. Swim for the other side. Wage peace. Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious. Have a cup of tea and rejoice. Act as if armistice has already arrived. ...